MAGICAL SILHUETTES

 

It is the natural right of every magnificent historical city to go through a love affair via a virtuous shutter release and a wealthy-hearted lens. Istanbul is definitely such a civilizations’ metropolis. Tevfik Fikret might have misidentified it as ‘an maiden widow’ in his poem saying, ‘maiden widow remainder from a thousand husbands’; nevertheless, for centuries painters, miniature artists and engravers, and from 19th century photograph artists have exerted efforts to show its beauties and powerful cultural values to all over the world, sometimes with romantic aspirations, while sometimes through a rational realism.

 

At the beginning of his art life, the photography magician Halim Kulaksız was bringing the objects, landscapes, faces, flowers into internalized frames. I met with Halim Kulaksız and his art in 1971. It was my chance to open his first exhibition. It was the first exhibition I opened as the Ministry of Culture – it was a distinctive honor for me: a source of pride to launch the exhibition of intense beauties’, internally saturated and fitted into human dimensions.

 

At the opening our photographs were taken: How young we both were. I saw Mr. Kulaksız and his photographs again almost 40 years later. This exclusive artist then, with a great breakthrough, was engaged with the unique synthesis of the broad skies of İstanbul and its historical panorama. This fascinating work on your hand is the masterpiece of culture crest line.

 

Halim Kulaksız have portrayed the majesty of İstanbul at the broadest angle possible, by a rarely – maybe the first time – used photo technique in our country. This is not a narrow perspective, nor a birds-eye view; yet a creative and highly comprehensive recording style, closely embracing history, intimate with the powerful synthesis of culture and architecture.

 

The skylines of İstanbul – most of which are masterpieces – are being exhibited side by side with equal dignity. These landscapes, which evoke excitement and impulsion as well as serenity and awe, get their strength from the lens of Halim Kulaksız. The silhouettes he flaunted are the experience of an extraordinary nature and civilizations.

 

You watch the combined panorama of various eras and cultures when you look from all around Kızkulesi at the entrance of the Bosphorus and Haliç: You feel that Zeus, tracking the beautiful Io, is flying over you. A few hundred metres away, there lies the birth place where Byzantium created İstanbul – where Topkapı Palace was built afterwards… Ayasofya, Sultanahmet, Yenicami, further Süleymaniye, Beyazıt Tower, Çemberlitaş, Dikilitaş, Galata Bridge – the Ancient Greek, the Ottoman, the Ancient Egypt and today is merged together – Moreover the Galata Tower of Genoese, Dolmabahçe Palace of the last Ottomans, the Bosphorus on which Dârâ set a “bridge” from yachts and battleships, furthermore the Rumelihisarı of Fatih Sultan Mehmet, ultra-modern Bosphorus bridges of the last decades, Üsküdar which lodged in ten thousands of people (spiritualized by the Ottomans), the most beautiful one of the barracks in the world - Selimiye, the hospital of Florence Nightingale who initiated nursing, the pride of stationhouses - Haydarpaşa … A city of magic, embracing the power of the eye…

 

In every season, the syklines of İstanbul is distinctly beautiful. Halim Kulaksız eternalizes the dawn, the sunset, the shimmer, the darkness, the sky and skyscrapes of the city of the cities. The colors, music and poetry of the skyline are all together. This is such a historical, architectual, art feast.

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Talât S. Halman

2009